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IIM to IIN!

(In this article IIM is a metaphor for any brick and mortar educational institution of the highest quality and IIN is a metaphor for any internet access device or service.)

In a country where 80% of the people have still not experienced the internet, is it really relevant to talk about going from IIM to IIN. Well if percentages are to be considered then what percentage has gone to an IIM or any other equivalent institution. 20% of the population is accessing information from the internet and that is a huge number, it is expected that 550 million Indian will be accessing the internet by 2018. So the IIN will probably be more

IIM as it will be more accessible and it will definitely not mandate an education loan.

This blog is not about comparing an IIM and the IIN, you really can’t compare apples and oranges, but this is about understand the phenomenal change that is sweeping the world of education. The best part is educators and educational institutions are china viagra probably not even aware that such

a huge change is happening right now. Most of the reports and blogs are still saying Edtech is the last frontier and that educational institutions are not embracing technology at the required pace.

The change is from IIM to IIN. An IIM is a brick and mortar educational institution, highly prized for the quality of its faculty and the quality of it education, highly competitive to get in and charging a fee that is 100 times the per capita income of the country. In this kind of an institution, there is a fixed time duration for the programme, a fixed time to enter the programme, a fixed time to complete the programme, a fixed group of students, specified faculty members and a fixed curriculum to transact.

The IIN is an amorphous creature, when a learner gets on to it, they don’t know what their learning group is, who are the faculty members, in fact all the members keep switching from learning to teaching and from teaching to learning. The learning is unstructured and informal, it keeps happening at different times and matches pace with the learner. The learning pathways and the curriculum are not well defined and structured.

Well we can say that the IIN is not going to give out a certificate that is valued by the society and there is no proof of learning, but this is not going to be the case forever. There is a digital record of what we are sharing on Facebook, how popular the posts are, so in essence if somebody were to give out a certificate for the use of Facebook, it is certainly quantifiable and certifiable. Surely it is more authentic than sitting for a paper pencil test on a specific date with a specific syllabus.

So the challenge before educational institutions and educators is how to cater to the learning needs of such individuals who keep flitting in and out of a programme, accessing materials, pausing or fast forwarding through the programme. The challenge will also be how to monetize these transactions, how does a Faculty get remunerated, how does an institution make money, all this will change and learners will become more demanding and aware. What value is being delivered will be assessed more rigorously than ever before, reputations will be made and destroyed in nanoseconds. It is time for the education community to take note of the fact that the day to day usage of technology in the form of google search, facebook sharing, whatsapp communication cialis generic etc. are changing the way people access and make use of information and edtech also has to be used with the same ease and convenience.

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